User:Renepick/MOOC Application

= Structure =

This MOOC consists of ten lessons divided into three parts.
 * Lesson 1 - 3: Foundations of the web
 * Lesson 4 - 7: Theoretical results of web user behavior
 * Lesson 8 - 10: Web & society

Lesson 1 & 2: History of the Web & Web Architecture
You will understand the historical development of the web and see how the cold war in combination with advances in technical developments led to the Internet Protocol suite.



On each Layer you will know one protocol and understand how these protocols build an open, inter operable and decentralized system. Furthermore you will learn about the domain name system and find out why the concepts of URI and Hypertext were crucial for the success of the web.

Lesson 3: Structure of the Web


You will learn about the six degrees of seperation and understand concepts like small world networks by studying 'the other' Milgram experiment. You will be able to use power law distributions to describe the structure of the web, its content and its users.

Lesson 4 &amp; 5: Micro and Macro behavior of web users &amp; Social Network (Analysis)
You will be introduced to theories from Microsociology and see how applying them to the behavior of people on the web leads to macro structures such as:


 * Influence
 * Information Propagation
 * Viral effects

Analyzing social network data from the Koblenz Network Collection using Octave you will gain a deeper understanding of social theories and social networks.

Lesson 6 & 7: Information Retrieval & Recommender systems


Completing this section you will understand the basic architecture of a (web) search engine. You can name the fundamental (non technical) difficulties one has in order to create a good information retrieval system. You will learn about the connection to recommender systems that are (not only!) used by large web shops to increase cross selling.

You will be able to discuss the danger of such algorithms like the relevance paradox and the filter bubble.

Lesson 8: Trust and Security


You will learn how third parties act as trust providers on the web and how this issue is related to markets with asymmetric information. You will see that trust issues in the online word differ from the offline problems. You will know of ways like cryptography, secure communication and certificates to resolve trust issues and how those techniques can even lead to a new currency.

Lesson 9: Web Economics


You will know of e-commerce models likeonline shopping & auctions as well as online advertising and marketing. You will be able to interpret and apply metrics for web analytics such as


 * Conversion rate
 * Click through rate
 * Bounce rate

Lesson 10: Web Governance and Web Ethics


Finally you will understand the important role of institutions like W3C, IETF and ICANN. You will use your understanding of the web architecture to discuss and explain the connections between


 * Net neutrality
 * Piracy and copy right infringement
 * Internet censorship and the freedom of speach

= What should the student know after completing the course / reading the book=
 * The student should understand the balance between centrality and decentrality of the web with respect to different fields of study like (IT, politics, sociology, economy,...)